This invention relates to an electronic musical instrument, and more particularly to an electronic musical instrument which is capable of arbitrarily establishing a number of the tone generation channels thereof and types of the tone generation methods thereof.
There are conventional electronic musical instruments each having a plurality of built-in tone synthesizing circuits (tone generators). In each of the built-in tone synthesizing circuits, a number of the tone generation channels thereof is fixed. The number represents the maximum number of the tone signals which are concurrently generated by a built-in tone synthesizing circuit. Therefore, the maximum number of the tone signals which a conventional electronic musical instrument can concurrently generate is fixed.
In performing a tune on the conventional electronic musical instrument, there is a case in which more tone generation channels than the maximum number are necessary to concurrently generate more tone signals than the maximum number. In such a case, in order to get the more tone generation channels, another electronic musical instrument is coupled or connected with the electronic musical instrument on which a player performs a tune, using a MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) cable. Other electronic musical instruments are used only to increase the maximum number of the tone signals which are concurrently generated.
However, the above conventional method, using plural electronic musical instruments to perform a tune, has shortcomings as follows. First, tone colors of the tone signals generated by one of the electronic musical instruments often unfit for tone colors of the tone signals generated by the other. Second, it is difficult to efficiently assign plural tone generation information to the plural electronic musical instruments connected with each other using a MIDI cable. Third, since the conventional method use only the tone synthesizing circuits from among all the devices of the other electronic musical instrument in order to get more tone generation channels, the conventional method wastes other devices like a keyboard, a switch-panel and so on.